As all drew back aghast and terrified from the little face of carved
stone, Gemma, who had tried the door only to discover the truth of
Tristram's appalling assertion, dashed instantly back to the table, and,
regardless of the imminent risk she ran, took the small image in her
hands.
"No, no!" they cried with one voice, haunted by the fear that at any
second it might explode and blow them out of all recognition. "Don't
touch it! don't touch it!"
"On the night when the two men completed their hellish invention, I
watched through the shutters unseen," she cried. "I saw Nenci explain
how this deadly thing was charged, and the mode in which it was set.
See!" In an instant all had grouped round her, as, turning the bust
upside down, she eagerly examined it beneath the shaded lamp. The
scratch running across the malachite base and up the outer edge of the
removable portion was, she saw, contiguous to a mark higher up. Nenci
had turned the circular base until the ends of the almost imperceptible
line had joined.
Another instant and nothing could save them.
With trembling hands Gemma grasped it, as Nenci had done on the night
when she had watched, and with a quick wrench tried to turn it back.
It would not move!
Next second, however, she twisted it in the opposite direction. As she
did so there was a harsh grating sound, as of steel cutting into stone,
a crack, as though some strong spring had snapped; and then all knew
that the mechanism of the devilish invention had been disordered, and
the frightful catastrophe thereby averted.
She bent down, opening Nenci's bag, and took therefrom a second bust,
exclaiming--
"He tricked us cleverly. Fortunately, however, I detected the
difference in the markings of that green stone, or ere this we might
each one of us have been dead." Then, placing the two busts side by
side, she pointed out the difference in the vein of the malachite which
had attracted her attention, and thus caused her to make the astounding
declaration which had held them petrified.
"You've saved us!" the Gobbo cried, addressing her.
"These men must not escape," Gemma cried determinedly. "They shall not!
Our lives have been endangered by their villainous treachery, and they
shall not evade punishment."